How to play Billy

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A vertical bouncer on a mountain with no top to it. Billy jumps by himself, at the same height every time, and the only thing you steer is where he is when he comes back down. The floor rises the whole run, so the only way to keep it under you is to keep climbing.

The goal

Climb as high as you can. Height is the score, measured in metres, and it only counts ground you have actually gained — drifting sideways can save a run, but it never moves the number. There is no summit to reach and no level to clear: the mountain keeps generating above you, and the run ends when the rising floor catches you or an eagle does.

Your best climb is kept on your device, and it is one of the two things that unlock the other climbers.

Controls

Because the bounce height never changes, a ledge is never too high to reach — it is only ever in the wrong place. Steering is something you do on the way up, for a landing that is still two seconds away.

The ledges

Plain ledges

Solid, still, and they stay where they are. They are the ones you plan around: the reliable rung that lets you set up for something awkward above it.

Sliding ledges

They track from side to side and they do not stop for you. Coming down, one is a moving target — aim where it is going, not where it is. Going up, it is free sideways distance, which makes a slider the cheapest way to cross the mountain when the next ledge is nowhere near the one you are on.

Crumbling ledges

One landing is all they give you. The bounce still works exactly as it always does; what you do not get is a second use of that spot. Treat a crumbler as a bounce, never as a position — if your plan involves coming back to it, you do not have a plan.

Launch ledges

The rare one throws you most of a screen. It is the fastest way up the mountain and the fastest way to lose your reading of it: you will arrive well above the ledges you had been lining up, with the whole layout new. Take them, but take them knowing you are trading position for height.

The world wraps

Walk off the left edge and Billy comes back on the right, at the same height and still in mid-flight. The mountain is a cylinder, not a corridor, so the edge of the screen is a route and never a wall — when the only ledge worth having is far to your left, going right is often the shorter way to it.

The eagles wrap too. One that has just left the side of your screen has not gone anywhere; it is coming back around.

The eagles

Eagles cross the mountain and touching one ends the run — unless you land on it. Come down on top of an eagle and you stomp it, exactly as if it had been a ledge, and the run carries on. A bird you spot late is something to steer around; a bird you spot early is a free bounce in mid-air where there was no ledge at all.

Stomps are counted and kept, and the count is the second lock on the other climbers — so they are worth going after, not merely surviving.

The floor

The bottom of the world rises from the moment the run starts and it never slows down. That is what stops the game being a puzzle you can sit inside: a perfect run of bounces that does not gain height is just a slower way to lose. Standing still is never free.

The climbers

There are three, and the choice is purely cosmetic — all of them bounce the same height off the same ledges. Two are locked behind two things at once: a best climb and a number of eagles stomped. A long run on its own will not open them, and neither will a stomping spree. The third is not advertised, and what it asks for is left for you to find.

Tips

Steer on the way up, not on the way down

By the time you are falling, the landing is mostly decided. The drift you needed should have started while you were still rising off the ledge below.

Read two ledges ahead

The next ledge only tells you that you survive this bounce. The one after it tells you whether you are somewhere worth being when you get there — a safe landing with nothing above it is where the floor catches you.

Use the wrap deliberately

When the ledge you want is most of a screen away, check the distance the other way first. Going off the edge is frequently the shorter path, and it costs nothing.

A crumbler is a bounce, not a home

Land on it with the next move already chosen. If you have to think about where to go once you are standing on it, it is already gone.

Hunt the eagles you can see coming

A stomp is height you did not have to find a ledge for, and it moves the second unlock. The ones worth taking are the ones you spotted with time to line up — never the one that appeared under you.

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